Solomon Asch Conformity Experiments (1951) Essay - 1526.
Social psychologists such as Sheif and Asch have conducted numerous experiments and concluded that through a variety of social influence, groups can change member’s thoughts and behaviour. Conformity occurs when individuals respond to peer- pressure by changing their behaviour to adapt to a group.
Solomon Asch (1907 1996) originally conducted this experiment to explain conformity to majority-established norms (Moghaddam, 1998). The subjects involved in the study were brought into a room with seven other students (who were all working for Asch and were instructed on what to do) and seated second-to-last around a table.
Asch’s (1951) study into conformity (see below) provides research support for normative social influence. He found that many of the participants went along with the obviously wrong answers of the.
This demonstrates that conformity reaches it’s highest level with just three confederates. Asch continued investigating group size and in one condition he used 15 confederates. In this experiment the rate of conformity slightly dropped, although Asch didn’t report the percentage.
The experiment is related closely to the Stanford Prison and Milgram Experiments, in that it tries to show how perfectly normal human beings can be pressured into unusual behavior by authority figures, or by the consensus of opinion around them. For the experiment, eight subjects were seated around a table, with the seating plan carefully constructed to prevent any suspicion.
Asch also introduced variables in which could affect the conformity and chose to create variations of his baseline study in relation to these. These variations were group size, unanimity and task difficulty.
In final analysis, the Milgram and Asch articles are different in three significant factors. Insecurity, responsibility, and gender all test different levels of humanity’s obedience, but, they come together and make society function in a revolving way.